After more than ten years in the workplace, I no longer want to "do great things", but want to do a practical "small thing" that can be done well by a few people. I also want to stay away from the original industry, so I can walk around and experience the local customs. So I naturally thought of tea.
Like many people, I make some tea every day at work, but I hardly know where to buy the right tea and what to drink when we meet. If we can start from "finding good and cost-effective tea for ourselves", we can help urban people like us find real good tea and share the story of local conditions and customs in the process of finding tea. This positioning should be in demand. To this end, I first made a trip through southern Zhejiang and Wuyishan to Chaozhou, and visited the local tea garden through the introduction of friends. After the initial contact with tea planting and tea making, I felt confident, so in June of 20 12, I opened the "Tea Hidden" Taobao shop.
The name "tea hidden" comes from the partner at that time. It means "drinking tea is an invisible method, which can hide for a moment in complicated daily life", which is a bit like a person's name. Tea Silver's initial partners were four people, and now it's mainly me and @ jingjingjingjingjing. I am responsible for going to Chashan, finding suitable tea farmers and suppliers, determining varieties, taking photos and putting them on shelves, and other matters. Sometimes when I come home from the warehouse after delivering the goods, my legs and feet are heavy, and I feel the same way for the old workers who want to have a drink to relax after work.
Tea Silver's slogan is "Simple and delicious tea". When we decided to sell tea to learn tea, the atmosphere of tea ceremony, incense and learning guqin also rose rapidly. But our initial intention is not to find tea for old tea customers, players and elegant groups, but to find affordable, comfortable and thoughtful tea among all kinds of tea. Young people prefer to go to cafes instead of teahouses when chatting. Maybe the face of tea is too serious, too proud, and even too deified. Under the popular "necessities", sometimes it is just the hype of merchants. If you stick tea on your body as a taste label like a luxury, it will be farther and farther away from the original intention of tea.
We feel that tea, wine and coffee have many similarities in planting, making and taste composition. However, wine and coffee are both exciting and active drinks, but tea can make people relax and calm down. This happens to be the difference between the west and the east. We hope that more young people will begin to understand and appreciate tea. There is no need for complicated props and ceremonies, just a basic understanding of tea. With a bowl or pot and a few cups, you can master the basic water temperature and water outlet time of different tea leaves, and you can drink good tea that makes you happy anytime and anywhere.
We initially chose products and took the cost-effective route. As more and more tea areas are visited, more and more good teas are encountered, and some medium and high-priced products and limited edition teas with small varieties and small output are gradually added. However, don't sell it too expensive, even the most expensive variety, most people can afford it, and you can't forget your initial heart. For example, our most expensive tea is the best Longjing of Tang Xiaojun, the king of Longjing tea in Hangzhou West Lake. This is specially made for auction. After delivery, five workers have to work for a whole week before they can pick out the perfect nail-shaped catty from more than 500 kilograms of tea. Last year, I took a kilo of180,000 in Hangzhou, which most people simply can't afford. But after drinking this tea, you can quickly establish the concept of "what is Longjing".
Every year around Tomb-Sweeping Day, Longjing flies all over the sky, but few people drink it to shine at the moment. Because the planting environment, picking requirements and yield have changed, there are almost no handmade saucepans, and there are fewer tea farmers who have mastered the essentials of tea making. I haven't drunk Longjing well, and I can't understand why this kind of tea ranks first among the top ten famous teas. It is a very good specimen, so we discussed with Mr. Tang, packed it into a bag of three grams, and spent more than 200 yuan to experience the top Longjing style. It seems tasteless, real and even tasteless, which is acceptable to most people.
The quality of tea, of course, depends on the local conditions first, but what touches people in the end is the relationship between people and tea. After walking so many tea mountains, my feeling is that it is meaningless to talk about tea without being a tea maker. People who love tea reverently, no matter how paranoid, should also make distinctive tea. For example, Tang Wang, a young literary artist who grows tea in Yangta Village, Jinggu County, Yunnan Province, has worked hard for seven years from being completely ignorant of tea to making amazing "flower needles" (small tea cakes with camellia and silver needles pressed together), "red rabbits" (yunnan black tea) and "moonlight white" (white tea).
And uncle Chen Chengzhong, who has been dealing with jasmine tea all his life. His goal in life is how to thoroughly infuse the soul of flowers into the body of tea. He is always gentle and cheerful when he talks about flowers.
If Tang Wang's tea is represented by pure tea with pure heart, Chen Shu's tea is the lingering fragrance of the traditional Fuzhou jasmine tea "sweet rock sugar" that the older generation has been striving for. Such tea people and their stories can be read in our tea introduction. Of course, these stories are helpful for selling tea, but more importantly, we hope to become a bridge between the few serious tea makers and tea drinkers in this era. Tell the story of the tea man with a wisp of tea fragrance, will the tea be revived?
More than a year later, a group of friends appeared beside Cha. Basically, as we expected, most of them are young people in cities who love tea and have no time to learn more about it. Through our steps and eyes, they read what happened in Chashan in the distance, and their feelings for tea gradually deepened. They often say, Yin, what you recommended must be right. In my opinion, building trust with these customers is our greatest gain and motivation. For everyone's sake, we must continue to find good tea.
Finishing: Li Qinghe
Photo courtesy: Chen Ruoyun and Cha Xiaoyin
20 14-03-30